Community Websites

When the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government put together its list of municipal websites, we discovered that a small number of websites are “unofficial” sites maintained by private individuals, often with the apparent assistance of local public officials. The Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government decided not to distinguish between these websites and the “official” websites of other municipalities that were clearly maintained by the local government officials. As long as the primary purpose of the website was to provide information about the activities of the local government, we treated the website as the municipality’s website. If the primary purpose of a website, however, did not appear to be to provide information about the activities of the local government, then we did not list it as the website for that municipality, even if the municipality did not have a website of its own. An example of such a website is the Petershamcommon.com website, a good community website, but not a website whose primary purpose appears to be to provide information about the activities and decisions of Petersham’s town government.

In the course of our review, the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government discovered other websites similar to the Petershamcommon.com website. These websites provide helpful information about community activities, groups, businesses and people, much like a local newspaper does. For example, there is Graftoncommon.com, Orangetowngreen.com, and the excellent Dunstablecommons.net. All of these websites can be good sources of community information for the residents of the communities to which they pertain. If you are from any of these communities, you should check these sites out.